Sunday, February 22, 2015

The Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox. On the search for extraterrestrial life, and why we haven't found it.

There's a lot here, a lot to ponder and chew on. So go read the article and give it some time.  I'll need to re-read it, for sure.

A couple of largely pessimistic reactions that I have:

  •  The "we're fucked" option is highly likely, if not so iron-clad as the article and accompanying diagram present. Because of the following fairly straightforward logic: it's easier to be clever than wise.  Our technology will develop faster than our personal-ethical or social-political structures. Through a combination of inadvertence and malevolence, we will have the capacity to destroy ourselves before we have the restraint not to. And this will be true in principle for any sufficiently technological civilization.
  • Once civilizations become interplanetary, on their way to becoming intergalactic, they will encounter, and fight with, other such. It's hard to imagine life forms that have succeeded in the competition of evolution that are not aggressively competitive for resources. It's hard to even imagine them evolving beyond instinctual xenophobia, though I think that's at least possible. In any case, the resulting conflicts may not leave many such civilizations living at the end of them. Maybe more than one in the galaxy--but maybe not many more. 

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